Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Vornheim: The Reviewening

I will start by telling a little customer service
story. I haven’t traditionally been a
huge Jim Raggi fan, but I gotta tell you, he’s good at customer service.

I ordered Vornheim from the LotFP online store about 5 weeks
ago. Last week I was getting a bit antsy
about it not being in my hands, so I wrote Jim an email through the store
support contact. I received a reply
promptly (accounting for time difference) which apologized for the
inconvenience, laid out the standard timeline for shipping to my location,
described some potential reasons for the delay and offered to buy me another
copy from a north American vendor (since he’s sold out) if the product did not arrive within a certain
amount of time.

I’ve worked in customer service, people. I was a customer support call center
manager. This is HOW THIS SHIT IS
DONE. Armed with the information that a)
the delay was within the range of expected shipping time, b) Canadian customs
sometimes slows stuff down arbitrarily and c) I had an alternative if I was
unhappy with the wait, which the vendor would pay for himself – I was happy to
wait a few more weeks. And lo and
behold, Vornheim arrived late last week.

So from one customer support professional to another –
fabulous job, James Edward Raggi IV. Top f’ing notch. It’s pretty likely that Jim knew that he
wouldn’t have to buy/ship me a copy from a North American vendor, but he made
the offer, and that is huge. Much of
customer service is managing expectations and providing options, and that was
deftly done here.

On to Vornheim.

This book is smaller than I expected. There is a certain expectation I have for
physical dimensions of RPG supplements, and this book does not conform to
that. But that isn’t bad. This is a very convenient size for an rpg book. I could fit it in a coat pocket if I wanted
to. And the contents make me want to.

When I actually read the book, it’s incredibly DENSE. There is more practical, useful, interesting
stuff in this book than in all the 4e books I purchased. There is NO wasted space. The INSIDE OF THE DUST JACKET has a map on
it. It’s like working in a well-designed
ship galley kitchen. Everything is right
there within reach and no space is wasted at all.

This is the chocolate brownie of role-playing
supplements. It’s small, chewy and
tasty. Getting a bigger piece would
almost be overkill.

I quite like the multi-column random tables. They are a great use of space, since they can
be used straight across with a single roll or rolled on multiple times. The dice-drop tables are also handy. I’ve spent some time deciphering all the
things they could be used for, and I feel that I’ve only just scratched the
surface.

The book is also fairly edition-neutral, which is a good
thing. I’m mostly playing D&D Next
right now, and I can use the stats and tools pretty much straight across. A handy-dandy “Later Editions Conversion
Table” is also included, plus the dice-drop charts support ascending or
descending AC, depending on your preference and system.

I’m a little bit less in love with the included
adventures. They are interesting and
all, but I can’t help but feel that the space they use would have been better
served with more tools. And make no
mistake, this book is a toolkit. There
are tools for quickly building street maps, tools for populating businesses,
for naming taverns, for organizing relationships between NPC’s.

Portable, incredibly useful, interesting art, helpful tables
and not a single square inch of wasted space.
This book is fundamentally different than what you see coming out of any
major RPG design company. I can only
wish that Gary Gygax was as good at book design as Zak S is.

The only downside is that it took a long time for me to get
it. But Jim Raggi dealt with that
problem in an admirable fashion. Thanks, Zak
and Jim – now I have to reevaluate what I expect from BOTH and RPG supplement
AND an RPG seller.

Zak S is a mad genius. It is entirely possible to run an entire wizard's tower adventure using only this book.. WITHOUT EVEN OPENING IT! Two minutes of prep to pull an adventure hook out of yer butt and you're ready to go!